BG 2050 findings revealed

Published 4:00 pm Tuesday, April 15, 2025

By Jack Dobbs

A glimpse into perhaps the future of Bowling Green is now available as findings from the  community-wide “What Could BG Be” feedback program have been made public.

The program ran from mid-February to mid-March. Members of the public were invited to share their ideas for how Bowling Green and Warren County should change and grow over the next 25 years.

The program received 3,940 unique ideas from residents and over 1 million “agree” or “disagree” votes, according to whatcouldbgbe.com. The categories that received the most ideas were arts and culture at 644 ideas, infrastructure and transportation at 574 and community identity with 479.

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During a Tuesday “fireside chat” detailing the results of the study, Warren County Judge-Executive Doug Gorman said since Warren County is projected to grow to more than 200,000 residents by the year 2050, the project is a way to lay a roadmap for how to prepare.

“Are we going to solve every problem, no,” Gorman said. “But if we don’t make a plan for 2050, it will go to us and it will change.”

The initiative has been overseen by the strategy firm Innovation Engine and led by a partnership with Warren County, the nonprofit Computational Democracy Project, more than 100 community leaders and Jigsaw, a division of Google.

Sam Ford, a cofounder of Innovation Engine, said conversations about the study always came back to one question.

“Do we want this to happen to us, or for us,” Ford said. “If we want it to happen for us, we have to have a plan, a strategy, a vision.”

A panel discussion was held Tuesday as well with business and government figures in Warren County discussing the findings.

Kristen Robinette, owner of the women’s boutique Back Down South, said an important part of the project is collaboration.

“No matter what area of the community you’re in, you’re partnered with someone else, even if you don’t realize it,” she said. “We survive as a community, not as one.”

The full findings of the study are available online at whatcouldbgbe.com.

2050 festivities continued Tuesday at the Warren County Courthouse where representatives from the project and county government buried a time capsule that will be opened in exactly 25 years, on April 15, 2050.

“We have so much to be thankful for, and I truly believe each and every day God has blessed this community,” Gorman said. “We can’t take that for granted.”

The time capsule contained the full report from the study along with some materials from the What Could BG Be? campaign, the 2050 edition of the Daily News and a collection of letters from students in the Bowling Green Independent School District.

BGISD Superintendent Gary Fields said that among the needs for the community over the next 25 years, students listed “flying cars” and a “bigger water park” as top priorities.

Fields spoke on the submission from the Class of 2025, who wrote a letter as a group.

“The last sentence from that group was ‘a place where I can live and work and raise my family,’ ” Fields said. “That’s from 18 year-olds in this community … I feel pretty good that we’re going in the right direction.”

Jack covers city government for the Daily News. Originally from Simpson County, he attended Western Kentucky University and graduated in 2022 with a degree in journalism.

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